I don't care about it because of advertizing revenue. Lance made it interesting for me for a little while. Now, I couldn't tell you the name of the guy that won the latest TDF and I'd don't care enough to look it up either.

Like any sport, you have to put in a bit of time to enjoy it. If you don't no problem. Lots of sports out there.

Fascinating BBC radio show for two hours thus evening talking about this and interviewing the main folks. Interesting little stories about borrowing make up to cover injection marks before a press meeting and loaning his plane to fly riders to Valencia for blood transfusion…
Look on iPlayer for Peddlers.

Jup, if they would be still over there he would have a warrant out for him and his team and he would go to prison.

He is not only a user, he is a dealer and there is in my opinion no differance betwenn a crack dealer and a doping dealer, both belong in prison.

Besides I have a professional carrer as a professional athlet, which ended 4 years ago because of TBI.
I know the professional side of sports and the temptations, the pressure and how doping can help, drugs are rempened, people ( and or animals in my case ) compet when they should not, or seek the thing that will keep or give that little bit more of an edge.
All of it I can understand, its human. Have I done that, nope. It always disgusted me.
But Armstrong actually organized it, not just for him, but for the whole team, because they had to keep up with him.
You dope you keep your job, you don't you lose it and Armstrong was the dealer and organizer.

I think the evidence shows the guy clearly cheated but I don't agree with anything else you said. I have seen him do a lot of good for people.

My wife went through breast cancer at the same time Lance was rebounding from his bout with cancer. His success gave her the determination to believe she could beat cancer. For us, he was a needed inspiration during our darkest moments.

But he is human and imperfect. If he has cheated, he will suffer and cycling will suffer.

My wife wears a scar, but like wrinkles or age spots it is merely a signpost in the story of our lives. Lance now wears a scar on his soul.

Looks like his sponsors have determined he's a cheater, and worst, a habitual liar. Perhaps his worthwhile charity will survive, but may need a name change.

Quote:

Lance Armstrong lost his sponsorship contract with Nike and Budweiser Wednesday and stepped down as the chairman of the Livestrong charity he founded as the fallout from doping allegations continued to plague the former champion cyclist.

Armstrong announced Wendesday he is stepping down as chairman of Livestrong so that the cancer-fighting charity can focus on its mission instead of the doping accusations.

Companies like Nike and Trek Bicycles continued to back Armstrong, despite serious personal red flags, according to Morgenstein, pointing to “the fact that [Armstrong] had multiple wives, they’ve overlooked a lot of things that maybe some other people would have been held to… This is a company that stuck with Kobe Bryant after what happened in Colorado (Bryant was accused of rape in 2003), Michael Vick going to jail (for illegally organizing and gambling on dog fighting), Tiger Woods in a global scandal (Woods admitted to being a serial cheater on his wife), and they stuck with those three. Lance Armstrong, they dumped.”

“USADA has found overwhelming proof that Dr. Michele Ferrari facilitated doping for numerous members of the U.S. Postal Service and Discovery Channel Cycling Teams,” read the agency’s decision.

It pointed to the testimony of George Hincapie, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Sharp), Tom Danielson (Garmin) and Levi Leipheimer (fired on Tuesday by Omega Pharma-Quick Step) and the evidence it gained from Italian investigations involving Filippo Simeoni, Volodymyr Bileka and Leonardo Bertagnolli. Taken together, it established Ferrari’s “involvement in doping” alongside Armstrong’s active run from 1998 to 2010.

USADA proved that Armstrong pushed riders like Vande Velde to use Ferrari. It showed that Armstrong tried to cover-up his relationship with Ferrari, proving he lied under oath in the SCA Promotion trial in 2005. It also obtained records of payments Armstrong made to Ferrari’s Swiss account, a total of $1,029,754.31 from 1996 to 2006.

Armstrong’s former physical therapist Emma O’Reilly was another who tried to expose the cyclist and was labeled a “prostitute” and an “alcoholic” by the American.

As rumors of drug use continued to swirl around Armstrong in 2008, Betsy Andreu said she was left a sinister voice mail from a friend and former business associate of Armstrong.

“I hope somebody breaks a baseball bat over your head,” it said. “I also hope that one day you have adversity in your life and you have some type of tragedy that will definitely make an impact on you.”

Carmichael was Lance's "coach", and years before also got sued and settled out of court for giving riders PEDs without their knowledge

Quote:

They don't know what was in those syringes, and they don't recall taking a drug test in those days. But they say the injections were given by the U.S.A. Cycling staff, including coach Rene Wenzel, trainer Angus Fraser and, according to documents, coach Chris Carmichael.

Strock and Kaiter are convinced that that was a program of doping, and there is considerable evidence that, in U.S. Olympic sport, doping has reached much further than you might imagine.

That charge comes from an insider: Dr. Wade Exum, who was in charge of doping control at the U.S. Olympic Committee until last summer, three months before the Sydney games.

Told there was a serious program to eliminate doping from U.S. sports, Exum now believes "it was all a sham."

"In the last year that I was at the US Olympic Committee," he said, "there were positive tests for anabolic steroids in badminton. I had anabolic steroid positives in shooting when I was at the Olympic Committee."

Exum is suing the USOC, saying it undermined his effort to protect athletes. He is offering his records in court. But the committee is asking the judge to keep the records confidential because "public disclosure of these documents would cause annoyance and possible embarrassment for many individual athletes..."

Exum estimated that fewer than one in seven American athletes who tested positive for banned substances, was ever sanctioned.

My wife wears a scar, but like wrinkles or age spots it is merely a signpost in the story of our lives.

I like this. Very much.
My wife went through uterine cancer (wow, I don't even like to TYPE the "c" word) recently.
God bless you, your wife and your family. Thanks for the bit of comfort those words offer.